Italian writer-director Paolo Sorrentino is returning to his hometown of Naples to make his next film, almost two years after the release of his 2021 Netflix drama, The Hand of God. The still untitled upcoming movie is about a woman named Partenope who bears the name of her city but is neither siren nor myth, the Oscar-winning auteur has revealed to Variety.
In Greek mythology, Parthenope, as she is known in English, is the name of a siren who having failed to entice Odysseus with her songs. As a result, she cast herself into the sea and drowned. Her body washed up on a symbolic foundational rock near Naples.
Production on Sorrentino’s new film is scheduled to begin the end of this month. The shoot is set to take place in Naples and on the island of Capri.
The scribe-helmer has released the following statement about his upcoming movie exclusively to Variety:
“The life of Partenope, who bears the name of her city, but is neither siren nor myth. From her birth in 1950 [up until] today.
“Her long life embodies the full repertoire of human existence: youth’s lightheartedness and its demise, classical beauty and its inexorable permutations, pointless and impossible loves, stale flirtations and dizzying passion, night-time kisses on Capri, flashes of joy and persistent suffering, real and invented fathers, endings, and new beginnings,
“Together with a host of other characters: men and women observed and loved, their waves of melancholy and disappointment, their impatience and despair, their anguish at never again laughing at an elegant man who trips and falls on a city street.
“All of this is accompanied by the passage of time, that most faithful of boyfriends.
“And by Naples, who charms and enchants, who shouts and laughs, and who knows just how to hurt you,” Sorrentino concluded.
The main cast of the filmmaker’s next feature includes Luisa Ranieri, who played the emotionally troubled aunt Patrizia in The Hand of God; Silvio Orlando, who played Cardinal Voiello in The Young Pope; and Stefania Sandrelli, who was Bernardo Bertolucci’s muse and has starred in multiple diverse Italian films.
The trio will be joined on screen by Isabella Ferrari (The Great Beauty); Peppe Lanzetta (Spectre); Alfonso Santagata (Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah); Lorenzo Gleijeses (Baby); Silvia Degrandi (Doc, Petra); and newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta. It has not yet been announced which roles each performer will play in Sorrentino’s new drama, which will mark his tenth feature.
The aeteur began his career penning and helming another Naples-set film, the 2001 comedy-drama, L’uomo in Più (One Man Up). The movie, which features two plot lines, stars Toni Servillo as an ageing crooner.
The actor then became the filmmaker’s male muse, as they also collaborated on the latter’s sophomore feature, the 2004 psychological thriller, The Consequences of Love. They also reunited on the 2008 biographical drama, Il Divo.
The duo also worked together on the 2013 art drama, The Great Beaty. The feature, which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA, serves as a love letter to Rome. Servillo played a novelist-journalist who’s struggling with writers’ block on a Dantesque descent amid the Eternal City’s grotesque glitterati and the country’s malaise and cultural impasse.
Sorrentino has also garnered international success on television with the Sky and HBO drama series, The Young Pope and The New Pope, the latter of which starred Jude Law. The prolific helmer then considered making his first Hollywood film before the pandemic stopped the project. He then moved on to scribe and direct The Hand of God.
Sorrentino’s untitled upcoming movie is being produced by Lorenzo Mieli for the Fremantle-backed The Apartment; Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent; Sorrentino for Numero 10; and Ardavan Safaee for Pathé, which will release the feature in France. Italian distribution is still being decided. The drama’s sales will be handled by UTA and Fremantle.